New Yorkers will foot the bill for injustice in Gristwood case

Daniel Gristwood spent nine years in prison for a crime he confessed to but did not commit. He would have served out his 12-1/2-to-25-year sentence and carried a horrific stigma for the rest of his life if it weren’t for the perpetually guilty conscience of the person who actually committed the crime. But Gristwood should not have been found guilty in the first place. He should not have remained in prison.

It’s difficult to imagine a juror more naive than the one who wondered, “How could anyone confess to a crime he didn’t commit?”

Obviously, he exists in a fantasyland where the good guys are always good and the bad guys are always bad. People sign false confessions all the time — sometimes for monetary reward, sometimes for publicity, sometimes they’re schizophrenic.

Perhaps the state police investigators exercised excessive zeal, but I would hesitate to chastise them unfairly. Remember, they were working on an attack in which someone bashed in a beautiful young woman’s skull with a hammer while she was sleeping. The troopers didn’t convict Gristwood; the judicial system did.

I don’t know how aggressively Gristwood’s defense team attacked the process that produced the false confession, but, obviously, not aggressively enough. If the jury in that trial heard what The Post-Standard reported about how the confession evolved and voted to convict, shame on them. If the defense team failed to present it effectively, shame on them. There was not a shred of evidence to connect Gristwood to the crime, except the dubious recollection of a nosy neighbor. What were those jurors thinking?

The real attacker tried to confess almost immediately, but Judge Anthony Aloi blew him off. His negligence is the seed from which this ugly tree grew.

Soon, New York taxpayers will have to cough up several million dollars to compensate Gristwood for the injustice the justice system forced upon him. It won’t fix what was broken in him, but I hope it wakes us up.